His Beakiness scratched the part of his forehead where all of his followers had scars carved in the shape of birds. (He didn’t have the scar because, as he had explained hundreds of times, “I uh, um, I just don’t need it, and I’m closer to the Gods than the rest of the Beaky Buzzards, and I do a lot for the organization, so I don’t need a bird scar on my forehead.”) “Where in the seven hells is Cervix Bangsister?”
Cervix looked out at the Sept from the window of her room in the Red Queef and gulped down her third goblet of wine that month. It was the morning of July 1 and a fine morning it was, but certainly made more fine with wine. She needed to stay sharp on such a momentous day. She poured herself the fourth and final goblet of wine she’d allow herself to drink until the top of the hour. Caaannn’t get tooooo drunnnnkk, she thought. I wannna, um, gotta remmemember what it’s gonnnna look like when my enemies, as well as a bunnnch of raaaanndom civillians perish innnn a fiery essplooosion.
Again and again Cervix thought about the mistake that had led her here: she’d had incest with the wrong family member. Usually she had a great sense of which family members were perfectly fine to take to the bedroom, with few, if any, repercussions. Imma Bangsister (nephew), Trynna Bangsister (nephew), Luvtue Bangsister (great-uncle), Hopentue Bangsister (nephew), Ineeda Bangsister (nephew), Iwanna Bangsister (nephew), Fuckbrother Bangsister (nephew), Igotta Bangsister (no relation). All of them had been inside the once queen of Westopolis. These seven boys and one man were handpicked for incest by Cervix, and no one who mattered cared.
Even back when she was queen, Cervix would have sex with her twin brother Lemme almost every night. In fact, even back when she was a child, Cervix would try to convince Lemme that it was okay for them to be having sex almost every night and then would proceed to have sex with Lemme on most of those nights.
And how did that end up for Lemme? He’d gotten one of the most important parts of his body cut right off: his head. Gone, just like that. Now he wore a prosthetic gold head like some kind of a freak.
“Incest gave me my son Jeffy and my son Timid,” said Cervix out loud to no one. “And it gave me the daughter that I have too, who has a name that I can’t remember right now. She’s… somewhere.” Cervix sat on her bed pensively, continuing to rationalize her choices to herself out loud. “Maybe King Jeffy had three hands and no mouth, but was that an incest thing? Probably not? And look at Timid. King Timid Boaratheon, my beautiful, beautiful hot baby boy. My lovely, kind, sexually attractive son. Did incest mess him up? Huh? Did it? It’s very possible, so did it? Have I birthed a defective child once again? Have we yet to observe the ways in which incest has messed up my hot baby son?”
What does it matter, she thought. For once incest has messed me up. Her mistake: Incel Bangsister, her thirteen-year-old cousin. I’d still be having consequence-free incest as often as I liked if not for that little bitch. As soon as Incel joined the Beaky Buzzards, he snitched on Cervix, like a little bitch. As one of the fanatic religious cult’s newest members, he would devote his life thereafter to the Seven Gods: the Father, the Mother, the Hamburglar, Officer Big Mac, Mayor McCheese, Grimace, the Chicken McNuggmonster, Dr. McFlurry, French Fry and the Ketchup Kids, Auntie Cheese, and the rest.
The Beaky Buzzards had taken over King’s Landing Strip with their army of surprisingly fit young boys almost overnight. Citizens of the Strip used to only participate in the fun parts of religion, like believing in the Heavens, marrying minors, and Halloween. Now the Buzzards made sure everyone partook in the not-fun parts too, like believing in the seven hells and it being mandatory to get stabbed in the forehead.
And now they had broken the camel’s back with a piece of straw. Is that—? That doesn’t sound right… Regardless, Cervix was to stand trial. Except she wasn’t actually going to stand trial. She was going to sit. Sit in her room, that is. Sit in her room while orphan children blew it up. Blew up the Sept, specifically. Blew it up with mildfire, precisely. Mildfire, exactly, to blow up all the Beaky Buzzards so she wouldn’t have to go to trial. Blow them up, of course, so they’d die, that is. Cervix grinned and reached for another goblet of wine.
Back in the Sept, His Beakiness stood at the center of a crowd that grew more and more frustrated with Cervix’s absence.
“All a part of the Gods’ plan,” he calmly stated.
“Don’t you see?” urged Manmeat Thighspell, the queen of Westopolis. “Cervix is not here. My mother-in-law knows how severe the consequences are for missing her trial and yet she still did not appear. Something feels off. We all need to leave. Now.”
Back in the Red Queef, King Timid Boaratheon put his cute little crown on his cute little head and looked at himself in the mirror.
“Tonight’s the night I ask Queen Manmeat to let me try anal,” he proclaimed. “And tonight’s the night she says yes, maybe.”
Timid closed his eyes and strutted toward the door singing an impromptu song: “I’m gonna put my wiener in a butt, uh huh, and sex is my favorite thing, oh yeah. Now off to this trial to make my wife happy; I think my mom might die—” But Timid stopped singing and opened his eyes when he ran face first into a Kingsguardsman.
“Ouch!” yelped the tiny king, rubbing his forehead where he bonked it on the soldier’s armor. “Excuse me, but I’ve got to get to the trial.” The man wouldn’t move. “You’re blocking the doorway, which prevents me from being able to leave the building and go to the trial.” The guardsman held position, completely silent. “Oh, wait,” realized Timid. “I’m the king. I command you to move, please.” No dice. The soldier held strong. “Or, um, uhh, um”—Timid had one last plan—“I guess I could just hang out in my room for the rest of the day?” Timid took off his crown and went back to jumping on his bed.
Tension was building in the Sept. Queen Manmeat was frantic. “I literally just shit myself, everybody,” she proclaimed. It was a lie. “I swear to the Gods, I just shit in my clothes!” She hadn’t defecated in weeks. “That’s how scared I am. We need to leave right now or we’re going to die.”
“Believe it or not,” announced His Beakiness, while smelling the queen’s rear end and making a face to communicate that everything down there smelled normal and the queen was lying, “I understand where Queen Manmeat is coming from. At this point, it seems pretty likely that Cervix Bangsister is planning some sort of attack on us, perhaps in the form of an explosion that will kill us all and stop her from receiving her punishment. But to you I say this: I don’t care. ’Tis the Gods’ plan. If we die in an explosion? I do not care. Any one of you could come down here right now and beat the shit out of me, and I would not care. Wanna fuck my wife? The Gods’ plan. You wanna kill me and have sex with my dead body? That’s awesome. Allow me to assist you. At the end of the day—”
Cervix woke up when she heard the BOOM bang BOOM owww help me! For the love of the Gods! The building is going down we’re all gonna die KABOOM of the Newly Fire-Resistant Sept of the Latter Day Saints exploding. Oh no no no no no no no no, Cervix thought as she rushed to get out of bed. Shit shit shit shit shit. Please no. Please no. She hurried to her window and looked at the rubble where the Sept used to be. Awwwww, come on! I missed the entire explosion like an idiot? The sky was red with the ashes of the Sept, the Beaky Buzzards, His Beakiness, and the rest of Cervix’s enemies in the Strip. A nap? I thought a nap was a good idea? I knew the Sept was set to blow in five minutes and I laid down to take a quick nap?
Cervix planted the palm of her hand into her face. I guess alcohol and mildfire do not mix well, she thought, chuckling to herself and pouring some mildfire into her wine to see how it would taste. Not bad.
Smoke filled the air all throughout the Red Queef. The nightmarish sounds of hacking coughs echoed through the dusty, ash-covered castle walls as they did everywhere else in the city. One could not walk outside without getting a face full of human ash. Every citizen of the Strip (no matter how rich or how poor) would almost certainly contract a respiratory ailment shortly.
Cervix had never been so happy. Such a glorious success called for a bottle of wine to celebrate. She even got a second bottle so that Timid could have some.
“I don’t want wine,” complained the immature boy. “I want Queen Manmeat.” Even for a twelve-year-old, he was acting like a childish, sober baby.
“Timid, you just have to trust me on this. You’re really overreacting right now,” explained his mother. Cervix pondered for a moment. Why is he being so annoying about this? Then, it came to her. “Is it intercourse, my son? Is that what this is about? Would you like to go to bed with mother?”
“I don’t want to have sex with you, mother!” cried out the melodramatic king. “What will my friends think? That I can’t have sex with a regular girl like Manmeat? Well, it’s not true! I can have sex all by myself!”
How do I get him to shut up? Cervix calculated. “My son, maybe Manmeat isn’t even dead. For all we know, she actually survived that massive explosion.” She could not help but snicker at the preposterousness of the thought.
“You’re Gods damned right I did.” It was Queen of Westopolis Manmeat Thighspell. Alive as ever, standing in the doorway, spinning a plate on her finger.
“Sexwife!” exclaimed King Timid. “I mean, Manmeat!” he said, correcting himself, moving a heavy book onto his lap. “You didn’t get dead!”
Fuck, thought Cervix. “Manmeat. You… are alive. This is… news. I’m so…” Cervix was so enraged that she could not remember the word “happy.” Shit, shit, shit. Come on, Cervix. What’s the word for “not sad”? Slippery? Candle? Slippery? “Heppy.” Yes, that’s it.
“I’m the only person who survived the explosion,” explained Manmeat, ripping off all her clothes and doing a 360-degree twirl, “but it came at a price.” The beautiful queen stood naked, unscathed by the explosion save for one complication. Both of her private parts (front and back) had been 100 percent seared shut for good by the fire.
“Oh,” eked out the young Timid, pale as a ghost. “I suppose… this means we can’t have sex anymore?”
“It would be impossible, Your Grace,” replied Queen Manmeat in a somber tone.
“I see,” said the boy. And so, King Timid Boaratheon, First of His Friends to Touch a Boob, Sitter on the Pointy Chair, Person in Charge of Westopolis, then removed the heavy book from his lap, stood up, and calmly launched himself out the fifteenth-story window to his death.
The Chair Room was filled to the brim with truly random citizens grabbed off the streets. Sideburn, the maester to the crown and Cervix Bangsister’s personal mad scientist, popped out from a secret panel in the floor giggling a maniacal laugh.
“Gods, how long have you been hiding down there, Sideburn?” whispered Cervix. “You smell disgusting.”
Sideburn cleared his throat. “I now proclaim Cervix of the House Bangsister, fifteenth of her name, Queen of the Sandals and Thirsty Men, Protector of the Chair, Person in Charge of Westopolis.”
He held up the tiara he’d forged the previous night. He smiled, admiring his handiwork, then put away the tiara and unveiled Cervix’s new crown. “All hail Queen Cervix,” he said, placing the crown on her head with one hand and discreetly rubbing the tiara against his groin with the other.
The new queen stood on the Pointy Chair. “My Queen,” whispered Sideburn. “The chair is for sitting. You must sit in the chair.”
“I see,” said Cervix, squatting in place on top of the Pointy Chair. The citizens of Westopolis gave her a standing ovation as she held the squat for nearly thirty seconds. I’m queen alright, thought Cervix, massaging her tired quadriceps.
When the crowning ceremony was finished, Sideburn took Queen Cervix down to his laboratory in the cellars of the Red Queef. “Have you ever been down here before, Your Grace?” asked Sideburn.
“Obviously not,” replied the queen, holding her nose closed. “Oof. Sideburn, I’m serious. What is that horrible smell?”
Sideburn giggled. “I’ll never tell.”
I truly may vomit, so this ought to be good, thought the queen.
“Queen Cervix, I’ve brought you down here to show you something that, in a word, ought to be good. Your Grace, when I heard that one of the Grandslam girl’s dragons was slightly wounded while fighting in Submeereen, I was so overwhelmed that I cried for four days. Just crying and crying and crying, couldn’t be stopped. I really don’t know if I am okay psychologically. You see, if dragons can be wounded, then dragons can be injured. And if they can be injured, then they can be hurt. So, I’ve developed a weapon that can hurt a dragon so bad that it actually dies.”
“This is fantastic news, Sideburn,” said Cervix. “Is that the weapon right there?” she asked, pointing at what appeared to be a pile of dog corpses.
“That’s nothing,” answered Sideburn quickly. “Don’t worry about that.” He nudged the pile of dogs into a corner with his foot. “The finest blacksmiths and artisans in all the Strip have been laboring day and night on this, Your Grace. It’s nothing short of a leap forward in human ingenuity and creativity.” He yanked away a giant cloth, revealing the weapon: a gigantic, massive sword. “It takes thirty men to just to hold this thing,” said Sideburn proudly. “Takes fifty to swing it.”
“So this will work? This will wound her dragons?” asked the queen with excitement.
“No,” replied the maester. “It’s more likely that it will just kill them.”
Clink. Clink. Clink. went the footsteps of a juggernaut of a behemoth of a really big man approaching from the darkness. “Ah, yes,” said Sideburn. “Your Grace, I have the honor of introducing you to the newest member of the Kingsguard, err, Queensguard, err, no, that doesn’t sound good. I’m just going to say Kingsguard because I want to.” Cervix looked up at the man. He stood at least nine feet tall. He was as wide as three men but not in a fat way. He was covered in armor head to toe and was dead silent. “You remember Ser Greggy, of course,” said Sideburn.
“Nope,” said Cervix.
“The Building?” asked the maester.
“The Building!” Cervix smiled fondly. “Why didn’t you just say it was the Building in the first place? I’d never forget such an ugly, disfigured freak as the Building. I thought he was dead.”
“He was,” said Sideburn. “But now… he still is basically. That doesn’t matter. If it please Your Grace, Ser Greggy has taken a holy vow of silence. He has sworn that he will not speak until all of Your Grace’s enemies are dead and evil has been driven from the realm.”
“Is this true?” asked Cervix.
“Yes,” replied Ser Greggy.
“Is this arrangement to your liking, Your Grace?” asked Sideburn.
Yes, thought Cervix Bangsister. Oh, yes.
“Sorry, is that a yes? You’re just looking at him and smiling completely silently. I can get rid of Ser Greggy if you want,” said Sideburn.
“No, yes. Yes,” said Cervix.
“No, yes, yes?” asked Sideburn, confused and frustrated. “Is it ‘no’ or ‘yes’ or ‘yes’?”
“It’s yes, Sideburn,” said Cervix, looking at her massive new bodyguard. “It’s yes.”
Malarya
Malarya Snark awoke in her bed, the sidewalk. She had been roaming the streets of Blahblahblahvos for months, tricking people into thinking she was a beggar by asking for money and starving to death. In addition to this she had to deal with the loss of her vision, which wasn’t all that bad, except people constantly berated her and beat her up because her eyes were a little milky looking and were hanging out of their sockets. This turned out to be a positive as she then learned a new type of fighting—fighting the adversities faced by millions of visually disabled people every day.
All this was part of Malarya’s training with the Tasteless Men, a secret order of Blahblahblahvosi assassins who disguised themselves by wearing dead people’s bloody faces. Malarya had sought them out to learn the art of killing people really hard, so she could ultimately eliminate everyone on her kill list. Malarya r
ecited the list aloud: “Walty Fuck. Cervix Bangsister. Um…” She found herself struggling before she even got to the hard part of the list, which had two guys in a row named “Throwup Jackson” whom she could never tell apart. “Uhhhh… Cervix Bangsister… Ed Sheeran?” That can’t be right, she thought. Ed Sheeran? The genre-redefining singer-songwriter-guitarist? Malarya would have to take her own word for it.
Malarya had been in Blahblahblahvos for far too long. She wanted desperately to be back in Westopolis—she hadn’t seen her remaining family in years, and she felt unwelcome in this strange land. She had no allies here, no friends, and the people of Blahblahblahvos would never accept her as anything more than a foreigner. Plus the public transit was garbage, and you ended up having to horse everywhere. But it was still too early in her training—she hadn’t been given a single target to assassinate.
Malarya heard a coin drop into the small collection box she had in front of her. “It has been too long, girl,” said a man’s voice. Malarya recognized the voice—it was Jaqof Cigar, her mentor, one of the Tasteless Men. He came at the top of every hour to kick over Malarya’s collection box and make fun of her goofy eyes.
“Please, Jaqof, don’t—”
“After six months in the streets, has a girl finally become no one?”
“What does that mean?”
“Would someone who is no one ask questions?”
“You just did.”
“I’m not no one. I’m Jaqof.”
“Well, then, I don’t want to be no one.”
“Well, you have to be no one, so—”
“I’m Malarya Snark of—”
“LALALALA—I didn’t hear you say that.”
“Fine! Fine, I’m no one.”
“Just as the prophecy foretold…”
Jaqof grabbed Malarya’s dangly eyes and shoved them back into their sockets, restoring her sight. He dropped a slip of paper into her collection box, kicked it over, and walked away. Written on the paper was Malarya’s first official assassination target: a traveling actress in a local production of Westopolis: The Musical! Malarya excitedly grabbed her sword, Noodle, and ran to the theater.
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